Stan
Kenton,
the band leader, died Saturday night in a Hollywood Hospital.
He was 67 years old. Mr. Kenton entered Midway Hospital on
August
17 after a debilitating stroke.
His
manager,
Audree Coke, said Mr. Kenton had never fully recovered
from a skull
fracture he suffered in a fall two years ago, following a
performance in Pennsylvania. Mr. Kenton was the last major jazz
band
leader to emerge from the Big Band era of 1935-45, and his
was one of
only a handful of bands that survived when that era
came to an end.
It was also the most
controversial
of all the big jazz bands.
The
screaming 'walls
of brass'
that were as characteristic of a Kenton
performance as the richly somber
trombones and the heavy, staccato
saxophones were alternately hailed
as 'progressive explorations' of an
alliance between jazz and classical
music and deplored as
sheer noise.
Arthur Fiedler, the late conductor
of the Boston Pops, called
Mr. Kenton
"the most important link between
jazz and the classics."
But Albert J.
McCarthy, an English
critic, declared that Mr. Kenton's music
screamed "because it can make
its point no other way".
"Kids are going haywire over the
sheer noise of this band," Barry Ulanov
wrote in Metronome magazine in
1948. "There is a danger of an entire
generation growing up with the
idea that jazz and the atom bomb are
essentially the same natural
phenomenon." Mr. Kenton took it all in stride.
'In an
Ecstasy All Their Own'
"Some of the wise boys who say
my music is loud, blatant and that's all,"
Kenton said, "should
see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the
snow to see
the band . . . to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all
their own."
Mr. Kenton, a pianist who sometimes played solos with the
orchestra, was a lanky 6 feet 4 inches,
and had a flamboyant manner that did not diminish the musical
turmoil
he created. He conducted with great arm waving vigor, ending every
selection
with up stretched arms and an ecstatic expression. He had an unwavering
belief in his own work, and was a tireless salesman for it,
giving it such descriptive titles as Artistry In Rhythm,' 'Progressive
Jazz'
and 'Innovations In Modern Music.'
"If you ask any 10 people on the
street if they have ever heard of Stan Kenton," he once said,
"only
a couple of them will say, 'yes.' We have to try to get the other 8.
And the
only way I can see to do it is to make myself a personality and take
my band along."
Mr. Kenton's 'experimental works,'
as he referred to many of the pieces in his repertory, were not written
simply to be different, according to Pete Rugolo, who was Mr. Kenton's
chief arranger in the late 40's and early 50's. In the years after
World War II, Mr. Kenton was one of the first big jazz bands,
along with Dizzy
Gillespie's, to use Afro Cuban rhythmic coloration in their music. One
of his compositions then was called 'Machito' in honor of the popular
Afro
Cuban band leader, while his arrangement of 'The Peanut Vendor,' built
on
Afro Cuban rhythms, remained a favorite of his followers throughout his
career.
Controversy
Over Advancement
Yet, some of his attempts
to "advance" jazz seemed, to the ears of some
listeners, to have
actually
lost touch with the form. Gunther Schuller, who has one foot on
each side of the jazz-classical divide, found in 'City of Glass', a
composition
by Kenton protégé', Robert Graettinger, "almost no jazz
material", certainly
not from any conventional point of view, but it came to be confused
with
jazz by a great many people simply because it was performed and
recorded by
Stan
Kenton and his orchestra".
At a time when most jazz musicians
became established in their early 20's, Mr. Kenton was relatively old
-- almost 30 -- when he formed his band on the West Coast
in 1941.
Born in Wichita, Kansas., on
February 19,1912, he grew up in Los Angeles and was playing with
local bands or in
speakeasies and saloons as soon as he graduated from high school. After
seven years, during which he played for awhile with bands led by
Everett
Hoagland and Gus Arnheim, he took two years off to study music.
This shifted his interest from
playing to writing and arranging He began writing experimental
arrangements, based
on his studies, using staccato saxophone ensembles and heavy rhythm
accents
in the Jimmie Lunceford manner. With these arrangements, he formed
a band that made its debut on Memorial Day, 1941, at the
Rendezvous
Ballroom in Balboa Beach, California. The band was an instant success
on the West
Coast, but when it came East in 1942 to make its first New York
appearance
at the Roseland Ballroom, the dancers complained that the band was too
loud and
that its tempos were not danceable; the critics were cool.
Late in 1943, starting what proved
to be a 25 year association with the newly formed Capitol
Records, Mr. Kenton
made two records --- 'Artistry in Rhythm,' his theme, and 'Eager
Beaver'
--- that shot the band to the top ranks of wartime popularity. The
following
year Anita O'Day, who had been singing with Gene Krupa, joined
the band
and was followed the next year by June Christy, who remained for four
years and was replaced by Chris Connor.
All three singers helped Mr. Kenton
reach a top audience that might have been put off by his undiluted
jazz pieces. Mr. Rugolo became Mr. Kenton's
chief arranger in 1945, taking
some of the writing burden off him and
contributing arrangements that
were so much like Mr. Kenton's that as in
the case of Duke Ellington
and Billy
Strayhorn, it was often difficult to tell
who the composer actually
was.
In the late 40's, Mr. Kenton,
suffering from periods of exhaustion, broke
up his band several times. Once
after going through analysis and finding it "such a thrilling,
rewarding
thing," he decided to go to premed school in preparation for becoming
a psychiatrist. He registered at a school, changed his mind, and
reorganized his band.
On another occasion, he announced
his retirement from music because, "I thought I'd seen everything
and said everything I'd planned to say in music. That lasted
about three
months," he said," and I almost went nuts."
From 1950 on, Mr. Kenton formed
a band each year, toured most of the year and then disbanded,
only
to form another band within a few months for the next annual tour. From
the mid-50's on, his penchant for experimental works diminished,
although he continued to get fresh, stunning and often provocative
material from
such arrangers as Bill Holman, Johnny Richards, Bill Russo, Ken Hanna,
Gene Roland, Dee Barton, Willie Maiden and Hank
Levy.
In 1959, his attention turned
to music education. He formed the Stan Kenton Clinic, summer courses
offered
under the auspices of the National Stage Band Camps first held at
Indiana University.
In 1965, he was involved in an
attempt to organize a resident jazz orchestra in Los Angeles, the Los
Angeles
Neophonic Orchestra, which began to build a repertory in his
symphonic-jazz
style. Mr. Kenton conducted during its first season, but when he was
not personally involved, the interest began to wane and the project was
abandoned after the 1968 season.
Mr. Kenton established his own
record company, Creative World Records, in 1970, when he became unhappy
about the distribution his disks had received from Capitol
Records.
He was particularly disturbed that Capitol had allowed his recordings
to
go out of print when his fans continued to flock to his appearances
throughout
the country and began reissuing them on his Creative World label,
selling them by mail along with records by a few other groups in which
he became
interested.
In recent years, Mr. Kenton was
on the road with his band so steadily, playing one-night stands for the
most
part, that he did not maintain a home. When there was a pause in his
journeying,
and he went 'home' to Los Angeles, he checked into a hotel.
Stan Kenton had three marriages,
including to Ann Richards, who sang with his band. All ended in divorces.
He had three children --- Leslie, a daughter, from his first marriage;
and Dana, a daughter, and Lance, a son from his second --- and three
grandchildren. A spokesman for the family said the funeral would be
private
and the body would be cremated.
Gone but not forgotten.
